High-profile assaults fuel concern that hard-won women’s rights are eroding as international forces prepare to withdraw from Afghanistan.

Afghan MP Fariba Ahmadi Kakar, centre, on a visit to Canada's Parliament in 2008, was kidnapped in Afghanistan's central Ghazni province, police said Tuesday. It was the latest in a string of high-profile, violent attacks on women in the country.

By:Reuters, Published on Tue Aug 13 2013

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN—Taliban fighters have kidnapped a female parliamentarian in Afghanistan’s central Ghazni province, a local police commander said on Tuesday, the latest in a string of high-profile, violent attacks on women.

Successive, often deadly assaults on women working in state institutions are fuelling concern that hard-won women’s rights are eroding as international forces prepare to withdraw next year.

Fariba Ahmadi Kakar was travelling by car with her three daughters, who were taken but later released, the police commander said. However, the kidnappers were demanding four Taliban prisoners in exchange for the parliamentarian.

Kakar, a member of the lower house, was the second female parliamentarian to be attacked in Ghazni in less than a week. Her husband denied the attack, saying she was travelling abroad, but the Kakar tribe’s elder, Samad Khan, said attempts were underway to reach an agreement with the Taliban.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said he did not know who staged the attack. “We are still investigating,” he said.

Under the Taliban’s 1996-2001 rule, women had to wear the head-to-toe-covering burqa, were allowed only limited schooling and prevented from leaving home unaccompanied.

Restoring the right to work and education has been a cornerstone of the Western-backed government of President Hamid Karzai, but patriarchal attitudes have remained entrenched.

Survivors of attacks often say their only hope is to leave Afghanistan, still one of the worst places in the world to be born female.

“I need to go outside the country for my treatment and for my security,” said Muzhgan Masoomi, a former government worker who was stabbed 14 times last year. “I was hopeful that the media would help me. More than one year has passed and no organization or media has helped.”

Masoomi still appears on the NATO-led forces website in an article headlined “Afghan woman vows to resume government career after stabbing.”

Kakar’s abduction follows the shooting last week of female senator Rooh Gul, police said. The senator and her husband survived, but their 8-year-old daughter was killed, along with the driver.

Last month, the most senior policewoman in southern Helmand province, Lt. Islam Bibi, was shot dead on her way to work in the provincial capital Lashkar Gah.

Bibi, touted as a rising star of the Afghan National Police, said she received death threats even from within her own family.

While the Taliban have often targeted senior female government officials, honour killings by conservative male relatives remain commonplace.

On Sunday, a woman in her 20s was shot by her husband after going to the market alone, the 11th female in northern Kunduz province to be killed by relatives this year, police said.

Concerns have also been raised about a rise in Taliban-style edicts in some regions, which have not been overturned by the government.

In June, clerics in a region of Baghlan province, north of Kabul, barred women from leaving home without a male chaperone and shut down beauty parlours.

In the same month, female parliamentarians discovered that conservative male members had removed a legal provision that women make up a quarter of all provincial elected officials.